From Kid Chaos to collective anarchy, Chad Ferman wants us all to just get along

"There is a definite need in the area for a place to buy Outhud and Rondelles records besides the post office," Ferman says, referring to the genre's close ties with mail-order inefficiency. Green Means Go! is exploring other outlets for its bands as well. While many of the acts that have come through the People's House have enjoyed generous airplay on college radio stations, that market bottoms out in this region. There simply isn't an adequate, strong signal -- a "college-rock" format station between the several isolated university communities scattered around North Texas -- so the collective is looking into buying AM frequency.

"You can't [beat] anything like radio as far as exposure goes," Ferman says. "And AM is cheaper, and the broadcast goes so much farther."

While the collective chips away at the radio option and relaunches its distribution element, it muses about setting up future outposts, once a month or so, in central Dallas and in Fort Worth. "Hopefully, it will help make things less isolated between Dallas and Denton and Fort Worth," Ferman says. He insists that while he's pleased with the sparks of an underground punk scene in Dallas, his ambivalence about his past dealings with the city is hard to shake. He started the defunct Dallas chapter of Food Not Bombs in the early 1990s, then saw the Durruti Column come and go, surrendering their territory to frat boys and gas pipes.

Chris Higdon

Elliott is one of the touring acts scheduled to play at the new Green Means Go! space in Denton.

"When we were doing [the Durruti Column], everyone around there was dead-set against us," he says. "It's even worse now. It's all this bar rock in Dallas, and that's it. All the [punk] kids that I meet from Dallas, they don't even want to play there." Ferman, of course, can't blame them.

But with Green Means Go!'s increased visibility, Ferman hopes to bring a heightened music consciousness to Denton, and perhaps beyond. His longtime punk ideologies remain intact -- he would like to see a scene less exclusively white and male and generally more informed and democratic. Not to mention more enthusiastic.

"Plenty of kids have said, 'No one's going to want that,'" he says. "I just want to know, how did you all become so jaded? I want bands to come through Denton and think, 'Yeah, those kids are on top of it.'"